June 21, 2013, is a day Jacquelyn Mitchell won’t soon forget. By the time she’d normally be sitting down to dinner with her husband Patrick and their toddler twins Hunter and Halle, the basement of her Elbow Park home was on its way to filling up with almost three metres of water and unforgiving mud. Mitchell, though, had no idea that by June 22, she’d be among the more than 100,000 southern Albertans displaced in the greatest natural disaster in our province’s history. That’s because earlier in the day, she was in a hospital operating room, giving birth to daughter Hana.

Neighbours, strangers, friends, and friends-of-friends-of-friends packed their rubber boots and work gloves and fanned out across the city Monday to help out communities whaled hardest by flood waters. The city’s first formal volunteer drive — officials put out an early morning call for about 600 people to help out — coincided with an organic outpouring of community spirit as volunteers by the hundreds lent a hand wherever possible.

City officials say low-lying areas in the southeast communities of Riverbend and Deer Run were being evacuated late Thursday. As many as 100,000 people were expected to be evacuated from low-lying areas in 25 communities by midnight.

As a massive flood that has devastated southern Alberta spread further into Calgary and paralyzed the city’s downtown Friday, the RCMP confirmed three people had died after being swept away in the fast-moving Highwood River. The bodies of two unidentified individuals were recovered Friday morning from the waters near the town of High River, which remains under a mandatory evacuation order.

Although some city officials are worried about community do-it-yourself temporary flood protection measures, Calgary has equipped itself with 217 inflatable flood berms to set up this year if necessary. That’s triple the amount of water berms the city had in its flood response arsenal last year, and at three feet in diameter each, they’ll be tall enough to replace some of the sandbags and land berms employed last year, mitigation program manager Rick Valdarchi told reporters Wednesday.

Nearly a year after the Highwood River spilled its banks and forced 13,000 residents to flee their homes and businesses, the town’s mayor wants to develop the country’s best emergency warning system. Town officials unveiled Friday its new subscription-based mass emergency warning system developed by U.S. software company Everbridge.

The Calgary Fire Department rang the bell to officially open the new Seton Emergency Response Station and Multi-Service Facility. Residents from the surrounding communities joined area MLA and Associate Minister of Public Safety Rick Fraser, Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, Councillor Shane Keating and Calgary Fire Chief Bruce Burrell for the opening.

The BMO Centre at Stampede Park was the place for philanthropically minded Calgarians to gather Sept. 16 in celebration of the Calgary Foundation’s introduction of the Smart and Caring Communities initiative.

Alberta emergency officials will investigate after a phone glitch disrupted 911 emergency service in the city, prompting police and fire crews to increase street patrols and temporarily use social media to respond to calls. Shortly before 10:50 p.m. Wednesday, the city’s emergency management agency was advised of intermittent service outages affecting Telus’s phone network.

An Inglewood street corner became a rallying point Friday for area residents furious over the recent derailment of Canadian Pacific cars that shut down the community and raised big concerns about railway safety. As the protest on the corner of 19th Avenue and 15th Street S.E. gained steam, the sounds of chants, noise makers and blaring car horns were deafening.

Gord Stewart has notched a couple of major recent victories as the city’s transportation projects boss. There’s the west LRT he delivered on time and within a rounding error of its $1.4-billion budget. And there’s the series of milestones his division has hit with the tunnel road being built under the airport’s new runway.

The city has proposed lands near Garrison Green and Royal Oak for temporary, “dormitory style” trailer neighbourhoods for up to 900 Calgarians who will be displaced for several months after the flood. Emergency director Bruce Burrell said the city used state of emergency powers to bypass public consultation rules to rezone the city-owned and business park lands for the temporary housing camps.

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